First he stated he wanted to end the Civil Rights Act and allow discrimination against minorities in restaurants and businesses. Next he said he wanted to rescind the Disabilities Act saying those with disabilities should just stick to the first floor and deal with steps. Now, he is saying to the unemployed: Suck it Up! Go get a job! -- Rand Paul -- I say you are you are completely out of touch!Blue Wave News reports:
Rand Paul, an eye surgeon and the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, believes that the long-term unemployed of America just have their expectations set too darned high. According to Paul, the tens of thousands of Americans who have nearly exhausted their unemployment benefits and who will soon be in dire straits because the Senate failed to pass an emergency extension this month, could have had jobs a long time ago if they were just willing to settle for ones that paid less than the ones they lost. Paul, who apparently has never had the bad luck to experience long-term unemployment – the kind where jobs are already scarce, half your job market is looking for work, and there’s serious competition even for low-paying jobs you can’t get hired for anyway because your work experience screams “over-qualified” – got on the air Friday with Lexington radio host Sue Wylie and had the nerve to tell people who are desperate, demoralized and worried about destitution that their carefree lives of leisure need to come to an end. He called it “tough love.”
“As bad as it sounds, ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that’s less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work and allow the economy to get started again,” Paul said. “Nobody likes that, but it may be one of the tough love things that has to happen.” Possibly because his understanding of the plight of the jobless is so stunningly superficial and academic, Paul fully endorsed the Republican filibuster that successfully blocked passage of the $120 million bill that would have extended benefits for the unemployed.
Paul said he supports the filibuster. If the Senate thinks the bill is necessary, it needs to find the money to pay for it elsewhere in the federal budget rather than add to the $13 trillion national debt, he said. “It’s all a matter of making priorities,” Paul said. “Some tough decisions will have to be made.” Rand, have you ever had to decide which utility bill gets ignored this month because there simply isn’t enough money to pay all of them? Have you ever tried to find an outfit for a job interview by poking through the racks of worn, stained clothing at the Goodwill store? Have you ever spent time agonizing over whether your child’s cough was severe enough that it warranted a trip to the doctor, because if you spent money on an office call, you would be short on cash for food for the rest of the week?
Those are “tough decisions,” Doctor Paul. Those are cases of people “making priorities.” Families whose providers have been jobless for months or a year or even more are not living it up, sir. They are scraping to get by. If there are folks on unemployment who aren’t taking jobs because they pay less than their unemployment benefits, it’s not because they refuse to work for less than they made at their old jobs – it’s because they are barely making it as it is and can’t afford to take a penny less! If a family is struggling to make ends meet with unemployment benefits, how dare a man with a medical practice and family connections in politics lecture them about “accepting a lower-paying job” and act like cutting off the only money keeping them off the street is some sort of character-building exercise?
The long-term unemployed are not a bunch of lazy rabble who think they’ve found the perfect gravy train. You may think that once their benefits end, they will race right out and “find” jobs because they’ve just been kicking back collecting those checks every week. What about the people who wind up losing their homes, who end up in homeless shelters or on the streets? What excuse will your libertarian imagination dream up to blame those people for their plight? You want tough love, Doctor Paul, diligent healer of human vision? Ditch the rug. Nobody with working eyes believes that’s your real hair.
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